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Running List: Simple Suggestions


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Allow Maneuver Node Planning in the Tracking Station
Make it possible to set maneuver nodes in the tracking station. When planning routes for flotillas, it's annoying to switch from craft to craft because of the loading times. (h/t @Brikoleur)

Mk0 Liquid Fuel has Wet/Dry Ratio of 9:
This component currently has a wet/dry ratio of 10. All other rocket and liquid fuel tanks have 9. It should be made to be 9 for consistency.

Action Group Binding for Resource Toggle:
Allow action groups to turn resource consumption for a part on and off. This would allow activation of emergency battery power, or force ore or fuel resources to or away from specific components.

Action Group Binding for Resource Transfer Out and Resource Transfer In:
This allows players to easily transfer or refuel craft with large tanks.

Never Create Missions for Debris:
If a satellite is marked as debris, do not create a reposition mission. If a base or station is debris, do not create an expansion mission. Discussion.

Allow Undocking From Any Mated Port:
At present, if two ports are docked together, only one of them will offer an undocking option. Allow both ports to offer the undocking option.

Additional Parts:

Rationale: Allow sharing of craft between more players (not all players use all mods). Reduce part count. Provide outlet for science points in late game.

  • 2.5m NERV.
  • 1.25m RTG. Reduces part count for designs with many RTGs.
  • 2.5m Liquid Fuel Tank in 8, 16, 32, 64. Same stats as Rocket Fuel counterparts.
  • 0.625 "long" rocket fuel tank (could be same stats as Mk0 liquid fuel)
 
Pilot 4: Precise Burn:
Level 4 pilots (can optionally) automatically stop a burn when the dV starts to increase (h/t @steuben). In practice, this is when the dV hits 0.0. Maybe there's a toggle or similar to turn it on/off.
 
Engineers Can Repair Broken Solar Panels and Antenna
 
Engineers can tweak Spring & Damper settings on Landing Gear:
When an Engineer opens the context menu for landing gear, allow them to set VAB-only tweakables on landing gear (possibly other parts). This also has the convenient side effect of letting you check what your gear is set to, if you forget.
 
Alert When an On-Rails Craft is Destroyed:
Using the Existing Contract System Alerts "Radio Signal" Toolbar Button, indicate when owned, non-debris craft on rails are destroyed. Discussion here.
 
Provide Profession Type and Semi-Major Axis Length for Rescue Missions:
I have a rescue mission to rescue a Kerbal from around the Sun, but I don't know what orbit that is. If the orbit is extremely far out, or extremely close to the Sun, I don't want it. I like how missions where you have to put a satellite into orbit will tell you what the orbit has to look like, so you can decide if you can achieve it before taking it. I'd also like to know what kind of Kerbal is being rescued.
 
Never Auto-board Kerbals:
Its much more time expensive to realize kerbals snuck aboard to try to launch and realize the craft is empty. Always require the user to indicate which kerbals are going.
 
Provide a Slope/Height Gradient mode in Kerbnet:
Picking a great base location is about picking somewhere flat. Would be great for KerbNet to not just show elevation, but to show slope, so you can see where the flat areas are. The color scheme probably needs to be non linear, because small angles matter a lot, but angle beyond ten degrees matter less. Contour lines might also do the trick.
 
Show a Marker for Pointing Away from Navigation Markers:
Most NavBall markers have two pairs: Prograde/Retrograde, Normal/Anti-Normal, Towards Target & Away. Navigation Markers don't have this, but it would be very useful for landing on them.
 
Don't Show Blackout Bars Unless They are Non-zero:
On the Kerbal portraits, there are bars that indicate the kerbal is getting close to losing consciousness. Don't show the empty bars when they are empty, there are just obscuring the portrait.
 
Completed Items

"Control from Here" Action Group Binding: (Added in 1.3.1)
Allow control from here to be set as an action group.
Rationale: This would make docking convenient, or changing the perspective from some craft helpful.

Do Not Reset the NavBall: (Added in 1.3.1)
When changing craft, leave the NavBall state (open/closed) as it is, instead of closing it every time. Discussion here.
 
Tweakable Reaction Wheel: (Added in 1.2)
The smallest reaction wheel (or all of them) should allow you to control how much torque it produces, since tiny probes over-torque with the smallest reaction wheel and the smallest okto (which has no torque). I think the current tweak for SAS (Pilot only/SAS only) is somewhat useful for rovers.
 
 
 
Edited by Wcmille
Added new ideas
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"Control from Here": Cool, but what about setting a priority(a number from 0-3). Right-click probe core, click this button until the number reads 3(high priority...for motherships). Set the lander or spaceplane priority to 2, and set the mobile rover to priority 1...Now whenever you dock, you will control the larger ship that is dictating where we are going.
Action Group Binding itself needs improvement, like modifying it in-flight, having a menu that can display the list of set action groups and maybe an "Alt+1...9" set of controls(vtol spaceplanes easily use up 10 action groups just for surface->space).

"Tweakable Reaction Wheel": That would be awesome, but it shouldn't even be necessary...yes i am gonna say it, MechJeb doesn't give this problem! :sticktongue:

Level 4 pilots should be able to not overshoot the prograde vector by 179' degrees! :huh:
The stock auto-pilot aiming is truly useless, it is like a little kid running into walls, you have to continually slow it down. It is only useful when you are actually already aiming in the prograde circle, to keep it there during launch and other long burns

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I'd like the option to remove fairings from staging, like you can with some other parts. It would be handy for making nosecones or cosmetic parts out of them.

Quote

Tweakable Reaction Wheel:

Yes, and it should be tweakable per axis. A reaction wheel setup appropriate for a long, thin craft in yaw and pitch will be too powerful in the roll axis.

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13 hours ago, solarbearman said:

2.5m SRB

More structural parts for rovers and bases

The SRB PLEASE. It's noy only a big aspect of the game but realistic! The Titan III is a perfect example as the boosters are as big as the center core and the center is too large to be a 1.25m!

I think something to help make cradles around your rover would be nice, it would help with making sky cranes and deployment.

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EVA Struts. Wonderful little mod, perfectly implemented (you'll need an Engineer to fix them to another part). Eliminates issues with wobbly large stations due to the flexibility introduced by docking ports. There's a lot of mods that I'm fine with that they're mods, but this is one that really should become stock.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...
On 5.7.2016 at 1:03 AM, Wcmille said:

Never Auto-board Kerbals

Its much more time expensive to realize kerbals snuck aboard to try to launch and realize the craft is empty. Always require the user to indicate which kerbals are going.

Nonono. Please don't do this. It would be so irritating that when you are competing for some challenge (that constantly requires you to quickly test your craft) to put the freaking kerbal in the pod seperately every time :P If you don't want that to happen you should start building a new vessel with some part that doesn't have crew in it since currently the game only auto-boards Kerbals if the crewed part is also a root part of the craft. Which is good because if you want them to auto-board you can use the crew part as the root part and if you don't want auto-board you can just use another part as root part.

Other than that I think these ideas are mostly good/neutral to me. I think we desperately need 2.5m LF only tanks though!

Also my new suggestion would be to make command chairs boardable in VAB/SPH. (Just look at TakeCommand mod and make it stock. It does just that.) 

EDIT: Oh @CombatWombat9402 just said that above :D I only read the OP

Edited by tseitsei89
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To me, the most lackluster part in the stock game is radial decouplers. Even the supposedly more powerful manifold can't really push your boosters far enough, typically ending in a RUD of your ship. SpaceY has an excellent decoupler that is packed with a few SRBs, and those are much more successful.

Also, as we're talking about radial decouplers... radial separators please? I don't want the microsats I attached to the main sat to be ugly.

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8 hours ago, Wcmille said:

@tseitsei89Could you say more about how auto-boarding helps you? When you say you need kerbals to auto-board for challenges, why is that? Is this because of revert-to-hangar, or something else?

Yeah. If I do some challenge that requires me to repeatedly test my craft quickly on the runway/launchpad (a good example would be "minimum mass to orbit" for example.) And then revert to vab/sph and do some minor changes and test again. If I had to put the kerbal in every time seperately it would be a major PITA.

And as I said earlier if you dont want autoboard to happen, just use some other part as a root part and it wont autoboard kerbals. So it's a win-win. We currently get both features and can choose if we want to use them or not...

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  • 10 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Blackout bars?  Is that a stock thing?  I've never noticed them.

I support the majority of these ideas!

For "never auto-board kerbals", I've noticed that when the root part isn't a cockpit, it may forget to board a pilot, so that's a possible workaround.

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5 hours ago, Corona688 said:

Blackout bars?  Is that a stock thing?  I've never noticed them.

I support the majority of these ideas!

For "never auto-board kerbals", I've noticed that when the root part isn't a cockpit, it may forget to board a pilot, so that's a possible workaround.

Yeah, they are stock; they might not show up if you have Kerbal G-limits turned off in your save game settings.

Indeed, when a cockpit isn't the first part you add; it generally doesn't get a Kerbal assigned. I still support changing the default to no Kerbals ever auto added; if I want one, I'll add it myself, and there is already a warning when trying to launch without any control.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Allow setting of tank type (Lf, Ox, or mixed) instead of having to swap them out. If necessary, bind this to tech level -- i.e. allow switching on a tank type only after you get access to the matching Lf tank. 

I make a lot of planes and this would (1) give a lot more flexibility and (2) make tuning fuel loadouts much less of a hassle as I could tweak part settings rather than have to swap out parts. Worse, as it is, there are no 2.5 metre Lf tanks which crimps my style.

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Pilot 4: Precise Burn:

Level 4 pilots (can optionally) automatically stop a burn when the dV reads 0.0. Maybe there's a toggle or similar to turn it on/off.

Changing it to local minimum might be better. Even with the pilot set to hold craft in the direction of the burn not all of them are responsive enough to take out that last little bit of error. Having, it at 0+/-x.y can mean they burn all the fuel trying to get there.

 

Quote

Engineers can tweak Spring & Damper settings on Landing Gear:

When an Engineer opens the context menu for landing gear, allow them to set VAB-only tweakables on landing gear (possibly other parts). This also has the convenient side effect of letting you check what your gear is set to, if you forget.

Seconding for landing gears. But, it should be case by case for the parts. Not sure what parts it would make sense for live tweakables.

 

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